Accredited since 1933
San Francisco, CA
The University of California San Francisco’s (UCSF) prestigious collaboration with the Commission on Cancer (CoC), of nearly 90 years, is historically significant and a valuable partnership. Compliance with CoC standards and maintenance of continued accreditation directly impact the way our cancer program provides outstanding patient care because this collaboration fosters a culture of care and supports a desire for improvement.
CoC accreditation is voluntary and not required by any healthcare standard setter, government agency, or insurance provider. Voluntarily complying with rigorous patient care standards demonstrates UCSF’s commitment to high-quality cancer care and is in line with UCSF’s own set of values organized under the acronym PRIDE, which stands for Professionalism, Respect, Integrity, Diversity, and Excellence.
Corresponding to our PRIDE values, and also consistent with striving for continued CoC accreditation, is our Mission Statement: Advancing Health Worldwide. ‘The University of California San Francisco is the leading university dedicated to advancing health worldwide through preeminent biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. Within our overarching advancing health worldwide mission, UCSF is devoted at every level to serving the public.’ CoC accreditation is one of the building blocks we use to achieve our mission at UCSF.
Maintaining CoC accreditation, by ensuring all stringent CoC standards are met, creates the framework necessary to provide our patients with the finest in cancer care, including state-of-the-art clinical services for diagnosis, treatment, rehabilitation, and cancer support services for patients and their families.
UCSF is honored to be among the shortlist of prestigious NCI-Designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers (CCC) in California – nearly all of which also maintain CoC accreditation. NCI-Designated CCCs consistently demonstrate superior outcomes compared to other facilities. It’s also noteworthy that nearly all NCCN member institutions, as well as nearly all other University of California Medical Centers also maintain CoC accreditation. Thus, maintenance of our accreditation can also be used as a marketing advantage.
UCSF routinely ranks within the top 10, in Cancer, per the US News & World Report—nearly all other facilities that share this honor (i.e., our competitors) are also accredited by the CoC.
As an NCI-Designated Comprehensive Cancer Center, UCSF is exempt from certain mandatory standards, allowing us to streamline the accreditation processes and procedures, which effectively reduces duplicate work and reduces costs, for documentation of standardized care overseen by other accrediting bodies.
CoC standards provide a structure and framework for the Cancer Program as a whole; this structure helps support the only comprehensive and multidisciplinary committee for cancer—our Cancer Committee. Our Cancer Committee provides comprehensive oversight of these standards related to patient care, and gives us a leading edge to support the community, with regional referring hospitals, and comparison to other academic centers. Our Cancer Committee is a unique body whereby a diverse multidisciplinary group is able to share, update, hear, and collaborate. Our Cancer Committee provides a good thumbnail overview of the entire clinical cancer program, and reports to Quality Council.
Maintaining accreditation allows our program to utilize the National Cancer Database’s (NCDB) reporting tools, promoting benchmarking to other CoC facilities—including large academic medical centers, as well as community-based programs.
CoC accreditation also supports the framework of our Cancer Registry. Cancer Registry data quality must comply with strict requirements, and therefore, contributes to internal research support. Numerous papers are published on an annual basis using Cancer Registry data, and hundreds of data requests are fulfilled by Registry staff each year. The Cancer Registry follow-up requirement is vital to the health and value of the Registry database, routinely utilized for research and outcomes, by internal investigators, hospital leadership, clinical trial teams, SEER, and other researchers.
CoC standards and requirements assist administration in allocation of resources, and in identification of gaps in support/staffing, which ultimately enhances coordination of care and promotes growth in cancer services available to our patients. In recent years, we have realized growth in many areas of patient support services, including: psychosocial services (Patient Support Corps), nutrition, genetic counseling and risk assessment, rehabilitation care services, our survivorship program, palliative care services, and end of life care. Growth of cancer services directly enhances the patient’s experience, as well as the experience of the patient’s family, visitors, faculty, and staff.
Requirements of the Commission on Cancer promote collaboration with other entities such as the American Cancer Society, which also directly improves the patient’s experience by providing additional resources, services, opportunities, etc. The American Cancer Society also has a webpage that advises patients where to get care, and they highlight CoC-accredited facilities. Enhancing the patient experience has been shown to positively impact outcomes.
The UCSF Cancer Program looks forward to continuing our long and prosperous collaboration with the Commission on Cancer. CoC accreditation is consistent with our mission and set of values; the collaboration fosters a culture of quality care, drives quality efforts, and is a significant value add to our Cancer Program. CoC standards provide a framework for our ongoing work and a foundation of support for current and future community affiliates. As reimbursement is increasingly linked to quality metrics, the focus on fostering an inclusive and collective culture of continuous improvement will remain at the forefront of our Cancer Program.
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